Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

Cocaine mainly originates in Colombia in South America and has traditionally been transported into Europe through Spain and Portugal. Spain is the main transit route and many Irish drug dealers live permanently in Spain in places such as Alicante. The Garda Síochána has international contacts and works with Interpol and other police forces.

I do not know if it is the one to which Deputy Sargent referred, but I recall launching a DVD made by a group in Tipperary. I am not sure whether it related to cocaine abuse. We use any means necessary to get the message across but the difficulty is that, regardless of whether it is suicide, car accidents or cocaine, young people or those in their 20s and 30s always believe that bad things will never happen to them. They believe that they can handle cocaine, that they are merely recreational users, and that they can walk away from it whenever they like. That attitude is simplistic and wrong. Many of these individuals do walk away. I would not try to pretend that people take one sniff of cocaine and are hooked for life because that is not true. However, a certain number of people are sucked in and develop ongoing habits and severe health problems thereafter. Those who abuse both cocaine and alcohol become extremely aggressive.

On the four projects to which Deputy Crowe referred, the Tallaght project is ongoing and funding has been continued. I understand that one of the projects fell by the wayside. There must be a certain momentum and throughput of work before such projects can be properly evaluated. The funding will continue at least until such time as the evaluation is produced. Some of these projects can be extremely successful as short-term measures but it is our responsibility to discover whether they will work in the longer term. It is not really a case of evaluating them on the basis of the number of people that access them in the first two or three weeks. These projects must be evaluated on an ongoing basis. As stated earlier, some of those who see themselves as recreational users are reluctant to use drug treatment facilities that might be used by others during the day. They might realise that they have a problem but they probably want to access treatment facilities at different times than others or else attend at separate locations.

Matters are not as simple as they might often seem. The projects to which the Deputy refers have potential and funding will continue until the professional evaluation is produced.

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